The tally of homeless families in Boston spiked by 25 percent this year, a result of “stagnant wages and increasing costs of housing, child care, and other essentials,” an advocacy group and a city official said Tuesday.

FamilyAid Boston, the group that tracked the statistics, said in a statement the city’s annual homeless census in February showed there were “1,543 homeless families in the city, an increase of 25% over last year’s census.”